This is part of a series on foreign policy issues Christiane Amanpour is analyzing in the-lead up to next week’s presidential debate on foreign affairs.

By Christiane Amanpour, CNN & ABC

After 9/11, Afghanistan truly was a “War of Necessity”. There was an unusual consensus, not just among the U.S. and NATO powers, but in many parts of the world, including in Iran and other Muslim countries, that Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda and the Taliban who hosted them had to be defeated.

And after they were sent packing from the Afghan battlefield, an extraordinary thing happened. The Afghan people supported the intervention. The land known as the Graveyard of Empires welcomed the new “invaders.” They knew that they had not come to occupy or do harm, but to help achieve a better future after decades of non-stop war and wholesale devastation – not only of infrastructure and institutions, but also the most basic human rights and freedoms.

As the Taliban were forced out of Kabul in November 2001, Afghan men, as well as women and children, voted with their feet. They marched to demand equal education rights for all, including girls, and thus for a more progressive future than the medieval reality the Taliban and the other Mujaheddin fighters had inflicted on them. FULL POST

Libya has come to the forefront in the U.S. presidential election campaign. The attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi last month has turned the deaths of the American ambassador, Chris Stevens, and the three other U.S. officials into a political football.

Ali Tarhouni served as Libya’s interim prime minister after playing a key role in marshaling international support and funding for the revolution that overthrew Moammar Gadhafi last year.

But he says he refused to run for prime minister in the recent election because he doubted the new leaders wanted to swallow the tough security medicine that he was prescribing in order to confront and rein in the militants.

“When I outlined what I wanted to do, the National Transitional Council at the time said that that's too tough of a medicine.” FULL POST